Singapore’s Smart Nation Fellowship Programme was rolled out in March this year, and had received almost 300 overseas and local applicants. In the end, it was 34-year-old California-based Arun Kishore who was the first overseas Singaporean applicant to get selected. Prior to his return, Kishore was working as a YouTube data science product analyst. The analyst who had been away from Singapore since 2007, was a computer engineering graduate from Nanyang Technological University (NTU). And despite his comfortable lifestyle in the US, he resolved to return to the little red dot as soon as he heard about Singapore’s Smart Nation initiative. Said Kishore in his interview in The Straits Times, “I felt I could contribute. It is an opportunity to provide public service and experience something different, something with a wider impact.” Kishore’s Homecoming Arun Kishore/…